This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2008, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

WASHINGTON - Having an ''auto-replace'' filter seemed like a good notion at the time to folks at the conservative American Family Association's OneNewsNow-.com Web site. There were certain words that would pop up from time to time in the Associated Press stories that moved onto the site that were a bit salacious, or unacceptable to post.

''We don't have the staff to monitor all the Hollywood stories,'' news director Fred Jackson said this week, ''so we wanted an automated function.'' He said they put up the filter about a month or so ago.

One word they wanted to filter was ''gay.'' The site felt that the term put the matter of homosexuality ''in a positive light,'' Jackson said, to which the evangelical Christian organization was much opposed. So when a wire story referred to gay marriage, for example, the phrase would automatically appear as ''homosexual marriage.''

Worked fine until Sunday, when the AP reported that ''Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials.'' The story was headlined ''Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.''

The filtered stories were spotted by the liberal People for the American Way. The organization has a ''Right Wing Watch Blog,'' communications director Peter Montgomery said, and folks ''who monitor religious-right Web sites as part of watchdogging the religious right and its political allies.''

The organization took a screen capture, he said, just before OneNewsNow fixed the text. An earlier story on the Web site referred to NBA basketball player Rudy Homosexual, better known as Rudy Gay.

Apparently there were no references in the past month to writer Homosexual Talese or to the Enola Homosexual.

As with all good pieces of software, Jackson said, there are drawbacks. It was ''a lesson for us to learn,'' he said. Jackson didn't know what other words were targeted, but ''we have taken ['gay'] off the filter.''